Arzberg Form 1382 Teapot

The Form 1382 teapot is a round vessel of white hard-paste porcelain, close to a sphere, set on a low foot ring. A short curved spout rises from one side and a plain ring handle from the other, and the flat lid is topped with a tapering cylindrical knob. There is no decoration of any kind in the plain white version, and the six-person pot holds 1.2 litres.

It belongs to a coffee, tea and dinner service that Hermann Gretsch designed for the Porzellanfabrik Arzberg in Bavaria, introduced in 1931. The service broke with the Rococo and Art Deco shapes then usual in German tableware, but stopped short of the experimental forms of the avant-garde. Gretsch himself thought undecorated porcelain, at most underlined with a simple line, the most beautiful for use, though Arzberg also sold decorations such as the blue Blaublüten pattern. Pieces were sold singly, so that a household could build up a service over the years.

The design was a commercial risk, and German Wikipedia records that it lost money until 1935. It won the gold medal at the Milan Triennale of 1936, and in 1950 the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed it in its Good Design exhibition. Gretsch's record is less simple: he joined the Nazi party in 1933 and led the coordinated Werkbund from 1935, and his plain forms suited the regime's taste. He remained Arzberg's artistic director until his death in 1950.

The pot has outlasted several owners, the closure of the Arzberg works, an insolvency in 2013 and, in 2024, the retirement of the Arzberg name itself. The V&A keeps one made around 1980, 15.3 centimetres high. Rosenthal, which owns the form, now makes it under its own base stamp and lists the white pot at 15.4 centimetres, unchanged in every visible respect.